The Nuclear Sisyphus needs to stop pushing his boulder

Greek myth tells of the proud and arrogant king Sisyphus who, after trying to cheat death, was forced by the Gods to roll a giant boulder up a hill. When he reached the top of the hill, the boulder would roll back to the bottom and Sisyphus would have to begin again. For all eternity.

The nuclear industry must know how he felt. Just when it thinks it’s getting somewhere, the industry finds itself back at square one. So much effort and futility for so little gain.

And the nuclear boulders are thundering downhill once again all over the world.

In the US, four nuclear power plants have closed or will close early, plans for new reactors are being trashed, permits for new reactors and reactor upgrades have been blocked until the intractable problem of nuclear waste is assessed, and the cost overruns on reactors currently under construction are running into the billions.

Like Sisyphus, the nuclear industry is dead - it just refuses to admit it. Here’s the difference though: Sisyphus’s boulder was designed to punish nobody but him. By continuing to needlessly, futilely push its boulder uphill, only to see it slide back down every time, the nuclear industry punishes the rest of us as well.

Think of all the time, energy, money and resources squandered on nuclear power in the past, present and (if the industry gets its way) future.

Imagine how all the time, energy, money and resources could have been and could be used. Energy saving programmes that would hugely reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Renewable energy solutions like wind and solar that can be deployed right now without waiting until 2020 or 2030 or whenever it is new nuclear reactors will be ready.

Energy efficiency and renewables are much smaller and lighter boulders to move. They are much more easily rolled up hill and we can all lend a hand. The view from the top will be spectacular.

Yes, nuclear is dead but so are lots of people exposed to nuclear radiation. This is the reason why nuclear must be ruled out; it is an international ...

Yes, nuclear is dead but so are lots of people exposed to nuclear radiation. This is the reason why nuclear must be ruled out; it is an international crime to run a business which routinely causes deaths to exposed communities. This has been recorded in published scientific journals for at least the past 50 years; more if you include victims of the 1950s atom bomb tests. The nuclear decommissioning and waste contract does not prioritise public safety. Unless it is changed, there will be further increases in avoidable premature deaths and heritable genetic mutations. The decision on nuclear power is not a matter of party politics in the UK. The UK needs to follow Germany and plan long term for safe, economic renewable electricity provision.

"This has been recorded in published scientific journals for at least the past 50 years."
Sure! Here's the scientific consensus:
...

"This has been recorded in published scientific journals for at least the past 50 years."
Sure! Here's the scientific consensus:
http://www.bigthunderwindpower.ca/files/resources/Electricity_generation_and_health_(The_Lancet_2007).pdf

Some quantified consequences of said consensus:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197

And finally, how Greenpeace et al. fared in front of said scientists:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20I8TUj6T5M

@Zamm_ Please do not manipulate. PCAH did not talk about "consensus" but pointed out that there is scientific record of problems. We have discussed this before and it is my impression you cling to the "deaths per kWh" picture. I think the picture is a lot more complex, like as example the situation around Fukushima is showing daily.
The publications you mention are not the ones that show that. They are severely biased in their assumptions and clearly tools to manipulate as well.
The video... sigh... I think it is a fair reflection of the UK situation: debating seems to be a sport, but certainly not discourse. If you try to build your opinion on that you are bound to be diverted from what really matters.

Yes, I do cling to the "average deaths/sick per TWh" picture, because this is a quite honest yardstick. Obviously, you're trying to weas...

Yes, I do cling to the "average deaths/sick per TWh" picture, because this is a quite honest yardstick. Obviously, you're trying to weasel out of this, just as the German "ethics" commission did:
"In particular, there is no requirement of a rational approach that forces the observer to orient themselves towards the so-called expected value (extent of damage multiplied by probability of damage) of the available alternatives"
Plain-language translation: "We know our recommendations will result in more deaths and illnesses on average, but our ideology comes before public health.": simply disgusting!
(As an analogy: a train accident may kill much more than a car one, but no rational person would phase out trains on these grounds, given their much better average safety.)
And please don't come with the "evacuation" argument, at least not before having a credible explanation why no one is, for instance, evacuating Germany because 3'000/y die there because of coal, plus many more from biomass for power or heating (hint: don't look in the "ethics" commission report for one, as they're obviously very comfortable with this - nur kein Atom!).
And, finally, may I remind you that the debate you lost took place not in the Daily Telegraph office, but in front of members of the RSC? Your constantly trying to discredit scientific results that don't fit with your ideology as "biased" goes a long way in explaining the result…

@Zamm_ Let's stick to the facts. We discussed several times before that assessment of impacts of low-level radiation is pretty difficult and that there are still many uncertainties to address here, though the linear-no-threshold model of ICRP seems to hold pretty well. We also discussed before that the methodologies used to calculate "deaths/TWh" have used assumptions and uncertainties that make it a very inexact science. Still, we agree that fossil fuels are far less harmless than they are often projected. You do not agree with the data available about effects of nuclear energy, though there is some available. The German Ethics Commission acknowledged the inexactness of especially low-radiation effect data and it also took into account the fact that large accidents with a lot of impact tend to be felt stronger than a large number of smaller incidents with a small impact. They did not prescribe how to take it into account, they just described that this is playing a role. Then they came to the conclusion that there are alternatives to the use of nuclear power that lead to less impacts and risks. The Ethics Commission referred to a clean energy policy direction. Not to more coal.
What I find disgusting is the fact that you refuse to take the real existing victims from Mayak, Chernobyl, Fukushima into account and to look at what are realistic policy options for a cleaner energy policy - simply because you do not want to give up your belief in nuclear.
Furthermore, I did not loose any debate (yes, I did - once with mr. Grimston, the history teacher nuclear lobbyist from Chatham House - because he used debating tricks instead of discussion). Nor did Greenpeace. The win or loss of a debate lies not in the applause of the public, but in the validity of arguments. Something British debating culture sometimes seems to forget.

OK, let's stick to the facts:
"Low-level radiation". Yes, the effects are uncertain. LNT is conservative, and may apply to some ty...

OK, let's stick to the facts:
"Low-level radiation". Yes, the effects are uncertain. LNT is conservative, and may apply to some types of radiation and not others (see UNSCEAR reports). Nevertheless, it is used in calculations that confirm low mortality from NPPs, see for instance:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es402211m

"Uncertain deaths/TWh". Agreed to some extent. But given the orders-of-magnitude difference, it is beyond reasonable doubt that, overall, the German antinuclear policy (see vs. France below) a) makes them die & get sick en masse, b) emits more CO2 and c) costs more. Quite an achievement…
(On the other hand, I agree with your point about filtered vents - not fitting them is plain stupid)

"Then they came to the conclusion that there are alternatives to the use of nuclear power that lead to less impacts and risks."
In their own words, from their report (p.15):
http://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/DE/_Anlagen/2011/05/2011-05-30-abschlussbericht-ethikkommission_en.pdf
"…almost all scientific studies come to the conclusion
that renewable energy sources and the improvement of energy efficiency yield lower health and environmental risks than nuclear energy."
What immediately strikes the reader: no references to said "studies", although the report otherwise carries many footnotes!
It's not surprising they didn't dare give any, because they had the choice between 1) serious studies (that don't quite agree… see above) and 2) citing their favorite quacks (Öko-Institut, etc.), which would obviously have elicited worldwide ridicule. So they just let it as-is, without references. Nice "ethics"…

"The Ethics Commission referred to a clean energy policy direction. Not to more coal."
P22-23: "By 2013, fossil-fuelled power plants with a capacity of around eleven gigawatts will be added to the grid, whilst power plants with approx. three gigawatts will be removed from the grid on grounds of age. This additional capacity is confronted with nuclear power plants with a capacity of 8.5 gigawatts which have currently been put out of operation"
You've obviously been caught red-handed here… given most of the "fossil" was coal!

"You refuse to take the real existing victims… into account"
Never said such a thing. The victims are real, just like the victims of train accidents. Nevertheless, it makes sense to promote both trains and nuclear because they are demonstrably safeR (emphasis added) than most other alternatives and given the fact baseload cannot be reasonably covered by renewables alone in most countries. Just have a look:
http://www.transparency.eex.com/de/daten_uebertragungsnetzbetreiber/stromerzeugung/tatsaechliche-produktion-wind
Ca 1.1 GW (out of >32 GW)…

"Belief". Nope. Just acceptance of scientific consensus, which is the same rational attitude the overwhelming majority of the RSC (Royal Society of Chemistry) public adopted in rejecting your representative's (Doug Parr's) arguments.
Scientists like facts, shun "debating tricks" and quackery, and leave "beliefs" to extremists and priests (such as those in the ill-named "ethics commission").

Japan 2011
Fukushima 1 blew up (six reactors to decommission).
Fukushima 2 required two years of repairs.
Tokai was also meaningfully damaged.
Higashidori had to resort to its emergency generators (though only one out of four could be used).
Onagawa was unable to restart after the earthquake and is still offline.

Each and every npp in the Tohoku area has been damaged by 2011 earthquakes. Not only: in 2007 the Chuetsu quake put Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, the largest nuclear site in the world, offline for nearly 2 years.

@Zamm_ Interesting. Sweden introduced vented filters 30 years ago... why didn't others, even within Europe? Why don't others do it now - even after Fukushima showed the dilemma's that occur during an emergency?
Yes, Japan is using a lot more fossil now. That's what you get with nuclear and a system that is not targeted at efficiency and renewables: one fuck-up and your only fall-back is CO2 emissions... I think you make our point well here. This is not to say that this is inevitable. Japan did a lot in the sense of energy efficiency and, being at present in Fukushima, I am amazed to see similar on-roof PV installation rates as in many a German town.
We have discussed your German coal story before. It is fundamentally flawed. Watching the world from an island seems to be difficult.
Ontario: the problem will come when flogging heavily ageing reactors too far past their technical lifetime (in spite of all the upgrades) will not work. We have no experience with that.
UK party politics.... Against the for me completely incomprehensible warbled argumentation in the UK debate (not discourse!) stands that in Germany all parliamentarian parties are now firmly in favour of nuclear phase-out - and that on the base of very sound public discourse.

Agreed on not running npps beyond their design operating life, but for a reason other than lack of experience.
A good industrial product fails i...

Agreed on not running npps beyond their design operating life, but for a reason other than lack of experience.
A good industrial product fails in several places when it is used beyond its design life. If this was not the case it would mean that its designers wasted money in making some parts more resistant than they had to be.
This holds both for your car and for a nuclear plant, including not only its reactor but also the pipes, the wiring, anything that contributes to the functioning of the plant.
Want a further proof? old npps are shut down in the US because they are too expensive to upgrade to run safely.

Zamm,
thank you for implicitly acknowledging the damage to all other plants besides Onagawa. Alas, Onagawa was not able to restart after the quake and it is still offline (so much for "undamaged"). For a detailed and objective description of the damages see http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/kan/topics/201106/pdf/chapter_iv-4.pdf.
IAEA statement ("remarkably undamaged") is propaganda, which is fine because IAEA is in charge of promoting nuclear power. Enough to say that the same IAEA praised the Japanese government for its response to the Fukushima crisis.
By the way, nuclear is nearly irrelevant to CO2 pollution because it provides only a few percent of the total energy consumption (you can't use nukes to push around a truck).
By the way, at the moment fossil fuel pollution concerns in Japan originate from China: in Peking air is so bad they cannot drive because of lack of visibility (!) and the wind is going to blow that air towards Japan.

Thanks for making an important point linking to our discussion above: You put the amount of casualties because of Chernobyl on around 10 000. There is good evidence to put that number up to around tenfold, but even fifty-fold. This illustrates that the discussion with deaths/TWh is a dangerous discussion because of the wideness of the range of uncertainty.
Again: Looking at health effects as one parameter is a good reason to phase out nuclear and coal. One of the many reasons. Greenpeace therefore pleads for a clean energy policy, moving away from these dinosaur technologies towards energy efficiency and a host of renewable energy sources.

Zamm,
You call Onagawa and Higashidori very little damage, I would describe it as a close call. Luckily readers can refer to the document I link...

Zamm,
You call Onagawa and Higashidori very little damage, I would describe it as a close call. Luckily readers can refer to the document I linked, which is short and easy to understand.

Concerning Onagawa, if it had been little damage they would have been able to restart the plant the next day, or in a few months, but you are conveniently ignoring this detail.

Higashidori too had a very close call in April 2001 when it lost external power sources, one emergency generator was offline and the other emergency generator was found to be malfunctioning after external power had been restored. If emergency generators do not work a npp is hours away from a meltdown.

Readers should compare this with, say, aeroplanes: on March 11th there were 14 planes flying (Daiichi 6 reactors, Daini 4, Tokai 1, Higashidori 1, Onagawa 2). A storm hit and 4 planes crashed, 7 managed an emergency landing but required years of repairs, the remaining one (Higashidori) stayed in operation but had to perform an emergency landing one month later, after being hit by a smaller storm. Would you fly again with that fleet?